Something about electrical brain stimulation freaks me out. That, along with ECT (electroconvulsive therapy). I suppose it's hypocritical of me to not fear substances such as caffeine, alcohol, or antidepressants, but the idea of sending current through an organ as sensitive as the brain makes me wary.
Not hypocritical at all. We have literally centuries of data on caffeine, and less than a decade's worth on electrical brain stimulation. Generations have lived and died drinking coffee and tea.
We know to multiple decimal places what a lifetime of regular caffeine intake in the form of coffee or tea will do to a person (not much, with the health benefits mildly outweighing any negatives) whereas no one has ever spent the bulk of their lifetime using this kind of brain stimulation regularly.
It may very well be harmless or even long-term beneficial. Or not. The only way to really tell is to perform the experiment, and as usual the early adopters will be taking the risks for the rest of us.
Well said. What freaks me out about electrical brain stimulation is the brain's well-known capacity for adaptation in response to repeated stimuli. What happens when the brain gets used to the stimulation, or even comes to depend on it? It happens with caffeine, after all. Who's to say it can't happen with an exogenously generated electrical current?
I'm excited for the possibilities here, but I'm in no hurry to be a guinea pig.
Most of the data is of the kind "people who drink moderate amounts of coffee show lower $BAD and/or higher $GOOD", so it isn't enormously compelling on the benefits (could easily be some confounding population characteristics despite attempts to get good controls) but is pretty compelling on the lack of harms.
There is at least some biochemical justification for the belief that coffee and tea are good for us--they contain things that are thought to have positive effects--but the chemistry is complicated and not well-understood.
And since humans are omnivorous hunter-gather-scavengers we are able to eat pretty much anything and still stay moderately healthy, so any strong claims relating diet and health are pretty close to Creationism: for humans to have a narrow, deep dietary optimum would have required our ancestors to be selected by processes that produced such a thing, and the life of omnivorous hunter-gather-scavengers is pretty much the opposite of that.
ECT has been construed poorly in the media, typically as abusive towards patients (or as a threat). However, it's a legitimate technique that's been proven in clinical trials repeatedly. In popular lit, you can read about the experience of going through (and receiving help from) ECT in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar; I've personally experienced a thorough ECT treatment, and her depiction of the relief (the titular bell jar imprisoning her/suffocating her is lifted to sweet relief).
Medically, it's introducing small (but seizure-inducing) voltages to the brain. The patient is typically given a muscle relaxant and/or a sedative for the duration of the administration. They are tied down—not to stop the patient from resisting, but to stop them from hurting themselves during the administration through involuntary muscle movements. This is repeated, multiple times in a week, for several weeks until being able to discern either a positive effect or lack thereof.
When I last researched, it was not entirely understood why this treatment provides such a fundamental relief. One theory (I tend to hold this one, as it just makes sense) is that some peoples' depression emerges from an overconnected brain, seeing patterns and associations that others do not (as easily). Under this model, the ECT severs some portion these connections and brings "quiet" to the depressed person's brain; again, this is similar to what I have personally observed in myself.
I should note, the ECT is a serious treatment with long-term neurological effects. Short-term memory loss is common, with other complications being much more rare. It should not be taken lightly as it can cause perceptible, permanent changes to the person's emotions, memory, personality, and cognitive ability, with by far the largest symptom being impairment of short-term memory.
Just in case you don't get an answer: ECT is in fact a standard medical/psychiatric treatment for certain types of psychiatric illnesses.
It gets a bad rep because of the existence of involuntary treatments. That doesn't mean that there are people that consent to it, because it can be highly beneficial to specific types of psychiatric illnesses.
As far as I've understood from a doctor friend that explained it to me, the patient is fully under narcosis and paralysed (otherwise the muscles will do all sorts of dangerous things), so they don't notice a thing, apart from probably waking up with a sore arm. This is because (I've been told) they leave one arm not paralysed for feedback and monitoring the process.
Indeed, ECT is highly misunderstood, mainly because it was misused in the 70s and the name "electro-shock therapy" as it's usually called sounds scary. It's frequently misrepresented by Hollywood too.
I know someone who had this treatment for extremely severe depression and it worked remarkably well. Short-term memory loss is a common side effect, but it doesn't last.
My graduate school research was associated with a very active bipolar disorders research group. Whenever ECT came up in casual discussion, nearly all the psychiatrists said they would personally choose ECT over medication.
I can't say I understand the diseases or symptoms that represents, but there's significant literature available for the efficacy of ECTs in relieving over-active and/or over-connected brains. Hell, one of the horror stories is in itself a success case—Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
I don't know if there is an absolute right or absolute wrong, an absolute better or an absolute worse for the effects and side effects of a substance or technique on the mind.
Caffeine and alcohol have horrible side effects on my mind, and my body. I didn't realize for years, about the caffeine. I don't know about this kind of electrical stimulation. The fear that I wouldn't have the predictable kind of control over the growth and direction of my neural connections doesn't sound like something I want. I tend to think of these things in terms of trade-offs though.
I personally do not think it is very intelligent to place control over a highly sophisticated organ in the hands (or brain) of another being, unless I am certain to trust that being in that they know what they are doing. Very generally, it just seems like allowing someone else to manipulate, shape, and mold my mind, without me having a choice over it. I don't know if that is paranoia, or a kind of 'survival of the mentally fittest'.
I know that when I feel like it is highly probable that I have been duped into thinking a certain way because someone else thinks it better for me, and I find out that they intended to do this, there is a certain kind of rage that manifests in me, that is unlike any other. It begins with the assumption that they thought they were more intelligent than me. I've thankfully never been proven correct on this, but I tend to disconnect from people that don't have the ability to maintain a constant of mental equality throughout interaction. This is fairly tangential to the topic, but I think it's somewhat relevant in a broader context of the potential consequences of science poking at the brain, without understanding how the brain might fight back.
allowing someone else to manipulate, shape, and mold my mind, without me having a choice over it [...] duped into thinking a certain way because someone else thinks it better for me
I remember a time when there was always somebody telling me what was good for me, making me write essays about things that didn't seem relevant, etc.; It lasted for years, and yes, it has shaped my mind.
I always just want to be aware enough that I have a choice. I want to be able to separate discretely what I've learned from the state or condition my mind was in before I learned it, and I want to be able to determine whether I am better or worse for it.
I practice what I call 'conceptual destruction', where I identify the foundational elements of a thought process, and I practice thinking without being able to use them. It can sometimes be difficult, but my ultimate goal is to have a sharp, stable, quick, flexible, cautious, careful, discerning, and so on, mind, that I created myself. I don't know if I am fooling myself half the time with things my mind does anyway without my explicit direction, but I like having a vast, partially independently established, pedantically defined and carefully organized system for 'ways of thinking'.
It's the only thing I really truly care about maintaining myself: having the capacity to condition myself, and having the intuition to be able to detect and identify when someone is trying to do it for me, or something is doing it for me by chance. I don't like having to depend on culture for how to think, I want to be able to know how to think on my own. It just makes the world less scary for me; it's an ability to rely on myself.
Have you ever played with any electronics to the extent that you've shocked yourself? It's actually pretty innocuous for the most part. TDCS isn't using the kind of current that comes out of a wall outlet.
There was an electric fence at the end of my street as a kid. My friends and I played with it quite a lot :)
I was shocked with it dozens of times, we all were, and only once did it really hurt. I couldn't walk for a few hours. For some reason my left leg went numb and didn't feel right.
For one thing, in the case of tDCS one is actively trying to penetrate the insulating protection of the skin.
For another, nervous systems change in response to what happens to them, particularly when what happens is more extreme than the everyday state of affairs.
I don't dispute anything of what you're saying in itself, but if you mean to imply that it's hard to go wrong with direct current stimulation to the brain because the currents are much smaller than what's needed to drive household appliances, I'm highly skeptical of that claim.
You can kill yourself with a 9 volt battery. There's no reason not to be skeptical. And if you aren't careful with tdcs, you can burn yourself pretty badly.
You're right, the placement is the same as previous studies. Though from what I remember those were testing for the alleviation of depression, so it's nice to see there are other positive effects with that placement.
I purchased it. I am hesitant to recommend a particular device because I am not a medical professional and there are inherent risks involved in using any of the devices. I would encourage you to check out www.reddit.com/r/tdcs and do some research yourself. In their FAQ they list several devices that you can start looking at.
Sorry, I know that isn't a satisfying answer but it's the only one I am comfortable with.
“This type of image analysis task is not well suited to automation. There’s no computer algorithm that can go in and autoselect targets for you, it’s a human endeavour. If we can help people pay attention for long periods of times, that‘s really important,”
at the very least, they should save the images and targets to use as training data, since that's being generated manually already. then they could see how predictive of a model could be generated, instead of just guessing that it would be bad.
NPR Radiolab had a story on this recently [1] where amongst other things, a reporter visits a US military lab and tries sniper training with and without electrical brain stimulation. Pretty interesting.
Doesn't like 30 seconds of exercise beat caffeine as well? Seems like if you just want a jolt of energy and cognitive capacity, coffee is a bad choice. It is, on the other hand, delicious.
Doesn't like 30 seconds of exercise beat caffeine as well?
Oh, definitely. As with getting an extra 45-60 min of sleep (or at least quieter sleep, without drinking excess alcohol beforehand) for a great many people. That's kind of the whole point about what's wrong with the results claimed in the article.
I believe both can work well. Caffeine works by more or less blocking sleep (by blocking bonding sites), increasing blood pressure, etc. Exercise works by increasing blood flow, releasing adrenaline, etc. Since they work in various ways, both can work well together.
If coffee roasteries could develop a decaffination process that would preserve the taste of the individual beans 100% (or even 90%), I'd drink decaf exclusively.
I don't actually want the bloody stimulant effects. I just want the tasty brown drink.
I was interested in the same question but there hasn't been any research as far as I have found. There are anecdotal accounts in various tDCS communities such as /r/tdcs
Researchers in the US have used electrical brain stimulation to boost the vigilance of sleep-deprived military personnel working on an airforce base.
Knowing the U.S. military, rather than addressing the root cause of the issue (namely: the totally senseless cult of sleep deprivation in the armed forces -- despite the ample research showing the mental and physical damage it causes), they'll start offering, what shall we call them? -- special "performance-enhancing" helmets. First on an optional basis, but then on a not-so-optional basis -- to administer optimally measured voltage, at optimally timed occasions.
From there it's a short hop to having these helmets (by then no longer optional at all) administer other kinds of signals, directly to the soldier's brains: to relay orders, identify targets... and to tell them when to pull the trigger.
> Knowing the U.S. military, rather than addressing the root cause of the issue (namely: the totally senseless cult of sleep deprivation in the armed forces
I believe the root cause is that the military prepares for war, and in war you can't schedule breaks or nights of rest.
Well but if you look at it from another angle, you can simplify your logistics if you can train soldiers to not need regular sleep breaks - and that is of value during war.
If one is to believe Suvorov, the Soviets designed their logistics so that they didn't have to ship food and sleep bags to the front lines - soldiers were expected to fight three days without food or sleep, and then retreat to have few days of break with as much food and sleep as they wanted, while the next wave of well-fed and fully rested soldiers was sent in their place.
From there it's a short hop to having these helmets (by then no longer optional at all) administer other kinds of signals, directly to the soldier's brains: to relay orders, identify targets... and to tell them when to pull the trigger.
But, the process of breaking down a citizen and building a solider could easily be described as developing a new operating system for the soldier, one which is designed to utilize the radio/hearing/brain pathway to achieve an identical end to your electrical end.
With "electronic helmet brain control", boot camp is irrelevant, but bootcamp and culture is itself an archaic "brain control", which serves an identical purpose already.
I don't think that would happen. Plenty of people are already willing to pull the trigger, especially if people are pulling the trigger at them, or they think people are going to pull a trigger at them.
More nuanced training and preparation, sure, possibly. I'm more concerned with targeted desensitization, but this is hugely arm chair philosophical at this point. I don't know if having concern for the future actually does anything. The world is so large, and so complicated. If these were simple problems, they would have been solved.
Eh, there is too much that can go wrong with that plan...
Besides, the meat puppets will have families back home that might get all sentimental when the inability to question the stupidity of your orders gets them shot.
Maybe better just go ahead and develop the robot army which will render the whole meat puppet order following helmet moot.
Besides being many times more effective, the robot army won't eat as much, won't require a lifetime of pension and medical care, and there will presumably be fewer problems with sexual harassment in the ranks.
So much for the years of developing iron clad discipline... the steam drill is here John Henry.
I've been really interested in tdcs for a long time, simply out of curiosities' sake, but the tdcs subreddit is private and there aren't many good resources for people who aren't sure they want to commmit to the heavier stuff.
One of the related articles at the bottom references the paper "Transcranial stimulation of the developing brain: a plea for extreme caution" [1] I would be quite interested in give tDcs a go but the tail risk of making some permanent brain change freaks me out.
I love reading quotes like that because it speaks to pure opportunity. Someone will eventually figure out an algorithmic solution to X, and that should remind us all how wrong the "all the good ideas have been done" line of thinking really is.
What you're saying is true, but to be fair this really is just about a worst case scenario for automated image recognition because it is unclear what is being looked for but "you'll know it when you see it".
Solving this in a way that doesn't generate an enormous amount of false positives requires something very close to a general purpose AI.
